Michael Jackson was once a suspect in
the mystery of the second Zone's composer due to Sirocco Jones' production credits listening
music for levels 2 and 3 called the water but by the late 2010s the
King of Pop was ruled out and the Prototype tracks provided the context that hydrocity's composition is in fact
a thematic center of the soundtrack sharing musical threads in
common with many other zones the glissandos sliding down the keyboard
added a stylish touch to Chrome Gadget and lava Reef and in hydrocity it's the first thing you hear while free falling into the
series' first great water stage this glissando kicks off
hydrocity's first melodic sequence featuring the kind of antecedent consequent
phrase that we saw in collision chaos first unresolved then conclusive like that track holding the 1-chord for
the whole section can definitely work especially if your Melody statements evolve
in relation to the chord tones of 1, 3 and 5 both phrases are made of the same main melody but the first phrase feels inconclusive because it ends on a note that isn't
featured in the tonic triad, the 6 and the Dorian 6 no less the next run through doesn't conclude on the 1 but lands on the next most stable
options, the tonic chord's 5 and 3 but by Act 2 Sonic knows his way around the sewers with the consequent phrase wrapping up
with the 5 to the ultimate tonic of 1 and that dorian tweak is a great way to
make an unresolved moment even more foreign without needing to commit to the
dorian mode for the entire track because we'll see plenty of the
natural minor 6th in droves later on for now the bass hangs out in this
Dorian stasis for the entirety of section A which is the same tack death
egg takes at the end of the game and hydro city uses this dorian
motion to octave hop up to the 1 which pops with the sudden
gulp of inhaling an air bubble and Sonic just misses the next bubble with the second drastic jump
getting demoted to the 7 close call Sonic 3 reinvented the water
level with speed and open air but the way to act 1's upper path
is by hitting this backward spring which newer players tend to jump over meaning they'll spend plenty of act 1 underwater the track's mid-tempo swing
rhythm matches the slowed down leaps and bounds of underwater platforming alongside swung low gravity classics like
the police's song "walking on the moon" knuckles' stunt has dropped
you disoriented in the water so the 1-chord is held for all of section A not really changing chords
or hinting where we're headed like when your friend pushes you into the drink for a couple moments you're not sure
what happened or which way is up but some clear chord progressions take
form as you gradually find your sea legs the chord's root notes only ever descend
below the tonic home base note of 1 never climbing above with an effect that treats
the 1 as the water's surface so after floundering in the
sewers in the first portion section B brings in chords 6 and 7 while you gradually attempt to
make your way up and out the water but this section ends with an uh-oh energy
because your water tribulations aren't done yet in the final section we're finally making
real progress up toward the surface with an even more blatant
climb up of chords 4, 5, 6, 7 but the Andalusian Cadence
from Ice Cap pulls us back down 'cause this H2O's not frozen yet but we're gonna get up and out this water the final run through funnels all
the water into a powerful sus4 chord to sussify a major chord you just move the 3 up to
the 4 and play the rest as is moving between the unresolved 4 and the stable 3 creates a satisfying ornamental touch
as seen in the first competition stage but you can add this sus4 power up to any triad and it's especially powerful on the 5-chord which is of course the heaviest hitter in
terms of generating motion back to the 1-chord you don't see this 5-to-1 in
Labyrinth and tidal tempest levels that lack the open
space and speed to justify it but when you give a 5-chord a sus4 that note is actually the 1
of the entire song's scale so it's a cool way to tease
a preview of the destination priming the pump for an impactful delivery
of the one chord at the song's loop which is even more explosive
in the finale of act 2 oh boy act 2 it is immediately after the act 1
boss that your troubles begin again the current pulls you down with these
descending drum fills and the swirl of bubbles the tempo rises 27 percent the most dramatic Act 2 Tempo increase of the game this adds to the urgency of
the advancing wall sequence and like cyber said about death egg for the rest of hydro city this breakneck
pace zips along with Sonic's new confidence as he soaks in the new normal of a water
level that's you know actually good and the bass provides such a
funky foundation underneath that Sonic can walk on water like the best of 'em including the stylish use of ghost
notes within a slap-bass style typically on stringed instruments you apply
pressure with your finger on the fretboard and the span of string you allow to vibrate
is what determines how high or low the note is but now if you ease up the finger
pressure but still maintain contact the string can't freely vibrate so it won't have a pitch or note but it will still provide a kind of thump a percussive rhythm sound of sorts these are notated with an X as a note head and here's the ghost notes at work
in the act 2 arrangement's bassline and this zone is more ghost town than a city because all the echidnas died except knuckles so all that remains of this
civilization is a watery state of mind where wild velocities are always on offer and ulillillia's got the
question on everyone's mind now you want to see some super speed yep, he's maxed this is nuts you thought the act 1 glissandos were cool but this second act is so stylized that section
A has a glissando after every melodic breath and in carpathia's piano reel video
these glissandos light the place on fire you can also see these glissandos
in action in his oscilloscope video as the frequency decreases
so does the pitch of the note so you can see the waves physically
widening during the slide down this song is just having a whole lot of fun and its samba grooves help kick off the party
with a heaping helping of the partido alto rhythm this is another example of an
asymmetrical Rhythm pattern like the clave seen at quartz quadrant what partito alto has is
four notes on the downbeats with three syncopated notes in
the in-between slots between beats here's how hydrocity kicks this rhythm into action meanwhile the drums provide a steady
symmetrical beat that helps stabilize the song allowing for this asymmetrical exploration
without unraveling the entire track the pitch of these partido altos
actually gets some cool sus4 action even touching upon the minor third
before settling on the major 3 section A of this partido alto wraps up
with a conclusive pentatonic walkdown a through line found all
over the Sonic CD soundtrack and even though it ends definitively on the 1 this stable resolution is short-lived with a 5-chord pushing you into section B see if you can detect how this clip
is altered compared to the original perhaps that just sounded regular to you but the actual song executes a syncopated
pull just one 16th note earlier as if the undertow is abruptly
yanking you into its strong current and section B continues the party this time referencing a rhythmic
shape closer to the clave as you can tell this track is densely layered with background melodies that may go
unnoticed through hundreds of playthroughs as rockin in section c is this tuba section plays like a lament of an echidna species worried for their future holding out hope for a savior
that may or may not arrive in time and if the composer wasn't
part of the Jackson Squad we can regard one strong possibility of
the act 2 arranger to be masaru setsumaru or setsu as he's known in the break room setsu was described by 'Sonic and
Knuckles' composer Howard Drossin as: the genius behind the sonic sound creating many of its sound effects and said
to be responsible for the game's act 2 remixes which could involve arranging programming or both if he was the arranger he'd have been the one
responsible for implementing the heavy influence of tropicalia throughout in angel island, hydrocity, and the proto
tracks for carnival night and launch base all of which furthers the
premise that from the beginning Sonic 3 was always supposed to be an island game sure Sonic 1 and 2 both took place on Islands but the fact of their islandship was
not a prominent factor in the lore it seemed more just a choice to
limit the amount of world building required outside of the zones you run through yeah it's just water out there but Sonic 3 calls attention to the floating
island through its plot and art design with the fate and altitude of this
land mass hanging in the balance this would explain why every level's
title card features a palm tree even for a frozen Zone like ice cap it's all one big island party, baby but Sonic 3's island vibe is not the only common
thread that unites the soundtrack's many levels there's a few recurring melodic and rhythmic fragments with tendrils
reaching ccross multiple zones and hydrocity is perhaps the biggest
source hub of these connections because how many times have we seen the very end
of a measure get jam-packed with eight 16th notes but then remove the very first one for a
silence on that spot on the strong beat and with more than one parallel to flying battery the zone that was supposed to
be ordered after carnival night and was even listed on Happy Meal bags at
McDonald's to promote Standalone Sonic 3 long before Sonic and Knuckles'
existence was even known to the public remember how the battery
was composed in a minor key but used that major 7th for some forceful momentum about three quarters into the end of the phrase because you know hydrocity is
going to get in on that too and there's another common thread even in these particular excerpts see how flying battery has plenty
of quick eighth and sixteenth notes but rounds it all out with
just four steady quarter notes hydrocity act 1 features the exact same thing so whoever composed this we're
on to you and it's awesome this legacy of water resurfaced
in sonic mania's Hydrocity zone a stage that takes the
original's high-speed aquatics and devolves it back to the labyrinth
experience of headaches and seasickness long sections of slow underwater physics the 8-Bit hell of bubble mechanics and you finally make it to the surface to just wait around on boats leaning on orchestra hits does
little to alleviate the pain and even nostradamus couldn't predict that
this title card would be the one to make you go uh yeah okay I think I've had
enough of this game for today so although this iteration has
forgotten the face of its father the Sega game ristar includes a loving homage built on the Sonic engine this game helped earn the devs a
subsequent promotion to Sonic Team status and wouldn't you know it the
second level is water themed with a composition by tomoko sasaki the spouse of Sonic CD composer hataya remember that stylish pentatonic walk down
that wrapped up section A in a neat little bow ristar's homage has a quick walk
down that's nearly identical but resolving on that minor to major 3 maneuver and hydrocity's cultural presence
also extends Beyond video games to get the word out for Sonic 3's release Sega partnered with the
musical group Right Said Fred famous for their song 'I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt' which I heard on the radio
a lot as a kid in the 90s for this Sonic promotion they changed
the lyrics of their song Wonderman to be about Sonic with his sneakers and attitude and a new nickname the music video intersperses in-game footage
and has the band in a real-life hydrocity zone among its hydraulic pumps and sewer tubes this water network provides H2O to the city above which became the ruins at marble garden with the edit in this video also suggesting
that the launch base Robotnik built now draws water from the same hub and even that's just a minor project compared to the sprawling
amusement park Eggman constructed in the time since the Death Egg
crash landed on Angel Island after the events of Sonic 2's final boss this lore and the soundtrack it's set to is a peerless accomplishment we may not know exactly who composed what but there's a silver lining to de-emphasizing
the person behind the composition when I rock out to the music in Marble Garden I'm connecting with the music as a direct
expression of the level's environment not interpreting it as a personal expression
within the context of miyoko takoka's discography and if we thought hydrocity
might have been a Jackson track it's because a Sega composer
achieved the incredible feat of selling the listener on the Jackson sound at the time a game was
released or a book is published the creator has taken their turn all that's left is the art itself from then on it belongs to the Sonic community the experience lives primarily in the
imagination of the people who play it through their reactions interpretations and
sharing battle stories on the playground that way when you're in the
zone for some hedgehog action only the essential is present you Sonic momentum and the water
